


You know Loki had to do it to him(self)

by fenwick



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Does Thor is gay?, Everyone Is Gay, Headcanon, Kid Loki (Marvel), M/M, Not Canon Compliant, The truth come out!, ThunderScience - Freeform, but literally this time, canon compliant? i don't even know the guy!, fucking loki, kid!loki, thor's kid brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-14 13:27:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16493441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenwick/pseuds/fenwick
Summary: Loki died, but it's ok, he got reincarnated as a preteen. Again. It just keeps happening, folks. I don't know what to tell you. And you'll never guess which person he tries to mess with first.Actually, if you guessed Bruce Banner, you'd be correct.





	1. Whoops!

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you like ambiguous canons

The sharp buzzing of the electric alarm on the nightstand continued to echo off the walls of the small apartment. Bruce had been lying completely still listening to the sound of the alarm ever since it woke him up five minutes. Because Thor’s gone off, for a week or two, to do...whatever it is that he needs to do to save the planet. Because Bruce realizes that he doesn’t actually know what to do with himself without Thor. Quietly, he tries to remember what he did when he WASN’T dating Thor, but he can’t remember, not right now, anyway.

The daily routine around the apartment has always been the same, ever since they moved in together. Bruce gets up, drinks tea and waits for Thor to get up so he can do the laundry without waking him up. Does the dishes, listens to Thor explain something to him that every child on Earth has already learned by fourth grade and tries his best to act surprised. And then repeat the last step until he goes to sleep. Not that he minds that Thor tries to explain dinosaurs to Bruce every day, it’s fun to see dinosaurs and basic math through an alien’s eyes. It’s just that he doesn’t know what to do without Thor and his antics in this apartment. 

Finally, Bruce gets up and turns off the alarm. And he realizes that it probably would have helped his mental state more if he turned the jarring beeping noises off. Too late now. He gets up and starts to go through the motions, making Earl Grey and reading a book, waiting. It takes him a chapter or two to realize that he doesn’t need to wait for Thor to wake up to do the laundry. The rush of independence that he gets from this concept lasts long enough for Bruce to stomp down the hall and noisily grab the laundry, trying to make as much noise as possible to make up for the months of...perhaps an unhealthy amount of time spent with Thor and only Thor. 

“This is good. This is good, get back to the basics. You can do it..” Becomes Bruce’s mantra for the day. And after the laundry, dishes, and vacuuming is done hours before he could have done it with Thor in the house, he stops in his tracks and wonders again what to do next.

The local newspaper sits on the table, untouched since Thor left. Weren’t local newspapers supposed to have free events you could go mess around at when your boyfriend leaves for a work excursion? And you don’t have a job? 

For a while, he cycles through all the people on the Avengers and considers carefully how much he would mind hanging out with each of them while leafing through the events section. The section for today is pretty barren, with only two events: a bluegrass music fan club, and a pottery class. He decides that the pottery class would be a better use of his time. Grabbing the nearest bag and twenty dollars, he practically runs out of the building, high on independence.

He almost reaches his car, too, before he’s stopped in his tracks.

“Where are you going?” A young voice echoes across the parking lot.

Bruce turns on his heels so fast that he almost falls over. There’s only one other person in the parking lot, a child. He’s bouncing a red ball off the side of the building and catching it, over and over. And he’s not looking at Bruce, so he checks on all sides for another possible source. The boy stops throwing his ball and turns toward Bruce. “Yes, I’m talking to you. I said, where are you going?”

Bruce squints, the sun blinding him too much to see clearly. He puts his hand in front of his eyes. “Uh, what? Do I know you?”

“Maybe.” He tosses the ball up and down in his hands now, smirking.

“What, are you like someone’s kid?”

“Sure, why not? Would you come over here, please? You’re squinting, you look weird.”

“Uh...sorry?” Bruce glances around once more for a possible parent to this little British kid but sees only a barren parking lot. Hesitantly, he walks over to the shade.

The kid looks like a normal twelve-year-old, the only thing jarring is the accent. His long...ish black hair strikes Bruce as weird too, not many mothers let their sons grow their hair out that long.

“I forgive you. But you didn’t answer my question.” The kid throws the ball at the side of the building hard, and it rattles some of the windows. A few residents on the inside groan. He catches it with ease.

A pause.“What?” Bruce has never been more confused in his life.

The kid squeezes the ball tightly, and his left eye twitches. In an attempt to calm himself down he clears his throat and cocks his head to the right. “I asked you where you were going, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, I mean, I’m going to a pottery-wait, who are you? What’s your name?” Bruce isn’t yet sure what this child wants with him, and for all he knows it could be an enemy in disguise, so he tries to conceal at least SOME things about where he’s going, but he supposes it doesn’t matter much anyways; if the kid really wanted to know where he was going, he could just follow him all the way there. In his head, Bruce runs through a scenario in which this kid follows him to the place he’s going, and he gets a little anxious at the possibility of it. He does his best to bring himself back to this reality.

“My name’s, like, Kevin, or something.” He squints at Bruce as he bounces the ball off the ground. “What’s YOUR name, then?”

“Uh, I..Bruce?”

“Just Bruce?” The kid seems fond of smirking.

“Just Kevin?” Bruce surprises himself with his snappy remark. He makes a mental note to try it more often, a note that he will never return to again. But, it’s fun to pretend.

Kevin pauses a bit to consider. “Touché.” Bruce wonders where this child learned how to say ‘touché.’

“Ok, well, I mean, I’m running late for my, uh...thing that I’m doing. No offense, but it’s Monday, shouldn’t you be in class? I want to say middle school?”

“Oh, but look how sick I am.” Kevin mimics a coughing fit, almost convincingly. Bruce shames himself for ever thinking that this kid was anything other than a normal twelve-year-old boy playing hooky on a Monday. He smiles.

“Ok, well have fun with your sick day, Kevin.” Bruce starts toward his car and starts to worry about what might happen if he does end up being late. The cycle of anxiety continues.

“You too,” Kevin smirked, hands in his jacket pocket as he watched Bruce drive away. Sucker.

With Bruce gone, “Kevin” turned to examine the building that he left. Is this really all his brother could afford? Or, maybe Banner is paying. Still….pretty shabby living quarters for two Avengers. Isn’t Tony Stark supposed to be a billionaire? He sighs and looks around for something else to do.

Well, that was the whole plan. Guess I should leave now? He was only supposed to mess with Bruce for a bit, maybe egg their window or something. Leave a note. And then skip town and join a circus or something. It took him long enough to find the place, he must have gone to about fifteen Thor and/or Bruce Banner fan clubs before he found a guy who somehow, suspiciously, knew where they lived. He had to keep watch on their apartment forever before Thor finally fucking left. Might as well make it worth all the trouble...right?

A thought worms its way into Loki’s brain, against his will. Mostly. It’s just that Banner didn’t unlock the door to his car before he opened it, which means he doesn’t lock his car. Which also means that he also may have neglected to...lock the door to their apartment. Once that realization enters his brain, it’s not coming out again. Just a peek inside and then leave. Just a peek.

 

Hours later, Loki looks around his brother’s apartment in distress. He’s made an uncleanable mess and now he’s stuck here, Banner is going to be home within an hour or two. The thought has not and will not dawn on him that he could just...leave before Banner gets home. How was he supposed to resist, anyway? Oh, how easy it was to get the doorman to give him the exact apartment number and floor his brother lived on.

“Hi, I’m looking for my brother’s apartment, I-”

“Oh, you’re such a cutie!” The man attempted to tussle his hair, but Loki dodged smoothly. “I know who your brother is. British, huh?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. We got that accent from being from...Britain.”

The man laughed and didn’t hesitate to give him Thor’s exact apartment address. “Second floor, door twelve. Tell your brother hi for me, huh? Or, what do you say in England?”

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

And then he got into the place and sat down on their couch for about five minutes before the adrenaline wore off, and he was overcome with the irresistible urge to mess with his brother’s stuff. Loki spent about half an hour frantically searching for a photo of himself anywhere in the apartment, and to his offense, he found none. In retaliation, he ate all of their cereal. That lead to another thirty minute period of him lying motionless on the couch, stomach hurting from the cereal revenge move. And thirty minutes after that, he woke up from his post-cereal nap to find that the sun was almost done with its daily trip west.

 

Panic is starting to set in as he looks at the mess, so he shakes himself out of it. He knows what he has to do, and he has barely enough time to do it. Thankfully, the apartment is barren enough to clean up in that amount of time.

Loki is just straightening the last of the little snake figurines that Thor has placed all around his apartment when he hears footsteps coming down the hall, fast. Loki runs so fast to the nearest closet that he knocks over one of the figurines, which shatters. No time to remedy that now. He sits completely still in the dark closet, praying to whatever gods still like him that Bruce is too tired to notice the broken figurine. The footsteps stop in their path.

“Hello? Who’s there?” Oh, shit. The footsteps continue, but now they sound cautious. Loki can hear the door to the apartment open, slowly. Bruce grabs a metal-tipped cane from the umbrella case that they have near the door and holds it in batter’s position while he scans the apartment. 

“Whoever’s in here, show yourself, right now, or you won’t like what I’ll do next.” Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Loki prays faster when he realizes how horrible it would be if the Hulk came out right now. Horrible for just about all the members involved. Part of him realizes that he should probably come out of the closet right now, to get the best results for himself, but he’s frozen. Luckily for “Kevin,” he doesn’t have to wait for long since the first door Banner opens is the closet he’s in.

“Bruce, I know what it looks like, but I swear it’s not personal. Calm down and drop the cane, I’m on my way out, alright? And you don’t have to mention this to Thor, either. That’ll only make things worse.” -Is what he would have said if Loki was not currently a twelve-year-old boy.

It comes out a bit differently than he imagined he would say it in his head, but it’s close enough.“BRUCEISWEARITWASANACCIDENT And I cleaned it up but I knocked that thingy over andthenIhid ‘cuz I knew you would know and then you found me and I didn’t know Don’t hit me with the stick, Mr. Bruce.”

Bruce drops the stick and looks with concern at the boy he thinks is named Kevin, and kneels down to his level. “Kevin, Jesus Christ almighty, what the fuck are you doing in my apartment?”

Kevin runs his hand through his hair and attempts to act nonchalant about the whole freaking out in front of someone thing. He hugs his knees. “Um, I didn’t steal anything if that’s what you’re thinking. I kinda got, uh...lonely.?” Not even Loki knows whether that’s a lie or not, so he doesn’t think about it too long.

“How long have you been in here, Kevin?” Bruce scratches his chin. “I mean, c’mon buddy. Don’t you have friends or something? Did you have to break into ou-my apartment?”

Kevin neglects to answer the first question for some reason. “I don’t. And I uh...well, I didn’t break in actually, so you can’t hold that against me. Did you know you don’t lock your door?” Kevin looks proud.

“That’s actually still breaking and entering, buddy.”

“Is it, though?” Kevin squints and taps his chin.

Bruce only nods.

“Oh, cool, well, how about this: you don’t press charges on that one, and then I leave, and you’ll never see me again.” Kevin gets up, brushes himself off, and attempts to walk to the door. Bruce holds out his arm to keep him from leaving.

“No, buddy, actually, you’re gonna tell me who your parents are, and I’m gonna call them and have them pick you up.”

Kevin sighs. “Right. That would work so well if I had parents, but it turns out I, actually, am a homeless, sad little orphan boy that just wants to leave and go join the circus.”

Bruce is facing an internal conflict. Deep in his heart, he wants to take this little, misguided orphan boy under his wing and then adopt him. But also, somewhere deep in the law of the United States of America, it says that you can’t force children to stay in your apartment. So: “You can go, but please, Kevin, please do not break into my apartment ever again. Just knock, next time?”

Kevin smiles. “I think it’s sweet that you assume you’ll see me again.” His sneakers squeak against the hardwood floor as he rushes out of the small apartment and slams the door, leaving Bruce to process what happened just now. He closes the closet door gently and leaves the cane on the ground while he slowly moves himself to the couch. So, this is what happens when Thor leaves, huh? Bruce smirks to himself. 

He decides that he could use some coffee right now and rips himself away from the couch, which still smells like Thor, and that shouldn’t surprise Bruce as much as it does. He was on that couch less than twenty-four hours ago. God, it’s only been a day and already things have gone to shit. Bruce is hit with a wave of sadness as he realizes that he’s not as independent and fun-loving as he thought he was. 

Someone knocks against the door gently, and for a moment, Bruce is sure it’s Thor coming back early. Except, he opens it, and it’s really not.

“Actually, I know I said you’d never see me again, but here’s the thing: can I sleep on your couch?”


	2. Chapter 2: Oops!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He just keeps on digging that hole he's stuck in deeper doesn't he!

Loki’s just about ready to admit to himself that this little prank on his brother has gone too far. Probably because it’s been four days. It is the fourth day of Bruce driving him to the middle school that he now attends, I guess. And Thor’s coming back soon, eventually. Once that happens, everything that Loki has lied about for the past four days will come crashing down. He has no doubt that Thor will recognize him instantly if he sees him. Even just the back of his head when he sees him. He’s actually really surprised that Bruce has no idea, or doesn’t seem to, anyway.

It started with one night on the couch. Bruce was reluctant to let him in at first, except no one but Thor has been able to resist a patented Loki stare. Then, at seven o’clock in the morning, he was awoken by a fully dressed Bruce with keys in hand. They jingle as he struggles to wake Kevin up from his slumber.

“Ok, I’m taking you to school, Kevin.” He prodded Kevin a few times before his hand was swatted away.

“What in the world are you talking about, Banner?” In his groggy state, Kevin forgot that he wasn’t supposed to know exactly who Bruce Banner was. He cursed under his breath.

“Hey, wait a second-” Bruce took a step back towards the umbrella holder near the door.

“I looked at your driver’s license. Sorry, Bruce.” Loki has always been good at quick thinking.

“God damn it, Kevin.” Bruce rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed in disappointment, and Kevin almost felt bad for a second there. “Ok, let’s go. I’m taking you to school.”

Kevin sprung out of bed and stepped up to Bruce, who didn’t budge. Damn. That would have worked if he was back to normal. “You don’t even know which school I go to.”

Bruce switched the keys from his right to left hand. “There’s only one school near here that takes elementary and middle school students, and I’m pretty sure you don’t go to the high school. Sorry, kid, I did my research.”

“Ok, well, I’m not going.” Kevin smirked as though he had ended the argument that simply.

“I’ll give you twenty dollars if you go to school right now.”

“I’m going.” Kevin rushed out the door before Bruce could get another word in.

And so this marks the fourth day that he had slept at his brother’s house, lied to his brother’s boyfriend on every mark, and had his brother’s boyfriend drive him to a school he didn’t go to. Bruce has been packing his lunches every day, in a brown paper bag. Today he made ham and cheese. He’s made friends and he’s running for school president. It has only been four days.

 

Every time Loki has started to realize that he should just stop the charade and run away, he quickly waves it away unconsciously. Because this is the most normal life that he’s maybe ever had, and he’s enjoying it, though he won’t admit it to himself. Or to anyone. He’s started to lie to himself as well, and now no one is in charge of the illusion. Loki just hopes that maybe, somehow, some way, Thor will get back from wherever the fuck and everything can just stay the same as it is now.

The car stopped in front of the drop-off zone and Kevin hurried out, the leather of the car squeaks as he shimmies himself out.

“Have fun, Kevin!” Kevin waves goodbye as Bruce drives away. In his rearview mirror, he can see Kevin run excitedly to class when he thinks that Bruce isn’t looking. The tapping of his shoes echoes off the concrete walls, and some of the kids greet him as he passes by.

This is all very weird, and Bruce knows it. It’s very, very weird. He’s hoping that the kid is lying about being homeless, but the emotion in his voice and the vividness of the details when he talks about his family is just too convincing. Besides, at least he’s going to school every day, even though it costs Bruce a clean ten to twenty each day, depending on how open to negotiation Kevin is feeling at any given time. 

Bruce tries not to think about the long-term sustainability of this whole situation. He’s more worried about Thor, who hasn’t contacted him since he left. Probably because Thor doesn’t have a phone or know how to use one. Plus, it’s doubtful he has a signal in space. Still, he coulda sent a….carrier pigeon? Drone? Anything?

So what if the routine of driving this fucking weird kid to school every day is making him feel better? He doesn’t do well with this kind of thing. No contact. And he’s not even sure when Thor will be back from his really interesting outer-space trip that Bruce wasn’t invited to-

The car behind him honks, and he wakes up from his thoughts to see that the light is now green. “Shit.”

-

Thor wakes up from his power nap in the living quarters of the spaceship along with the sudden jolt of the pilot steering away from something unseen. He snaps up into a seated position, bumping his head on the top of the ceiling in the process. The engine hums quietly as the ship continues on its path to Earth uncomplicated. He fell asleep in his cape again, and it’s wrapped itself around him, trapping his arms. It takes him a minute to figure out how to break free. When he does, he stumbled himself into the cockpit. Another jolt rocks the ship again, dodging a small meteor. The lights in the cabin are very dim compared to the light of the Earth in the distance, which turns everything a hazy blue.

“Hey big guy, we’re getting there. Around an hour and we’ll be safe as houses.” Comes the voice from the pilot’s chair.

Thor only nods while he looks around frantically for the coffee pot. He finds nothing. “Where’s the coffee pot, Qu-”

“How many times do I have to tell you that we don’t have a coffee pot? Jesus. I should keep a tally.”

Thor rolls his eyes and drags himself back to the living quarters. “Ok, fine, just speed this up a little bit, alright? I want to go home.” He sneers. The cape rack remains empty as Thor again forgets to take off it off as he goes to lie down. Thor receives no response except a few silent curses and the slight increase in the speed of travel. He falls to sleep within a few minutes of laying down, cape wrapped around him like a cocoon as the ship speeds towards Earth.

-

Loki rocks his feet back and forth while waiting at the drop off center. There are no other children waiting, only him. It’s not the Bruce is late, Bruce is always early. It’s that he’s far too early. He told the math teacher that he had to go to the bathroom and never came back. It must have not seemed suspicious that he packed all of his things up before he left. He couldn’t stand to be in there any longer, the math was boring to him, sure, he learned all the same things thousands of years ago. But that wasn’t the point, his anxiety had been ramping up all day because he knew that every second that ticked by was one second closer to the arrival of his brother. He didn’t have a plan for that. And no matter how hard he thinks, he can’t think of a good one. A plan where no one gets hurt. 

He fiddles with his jacket strings and sighs. The wind blows a few leaves across the sidewalk. The second he even said a word to Bruce was the second this all went wrong. It didn’t really matter that he stayed four whole days, it would have been almost as bad if he just left after Bruce drove away. Thor would react almost the same. Almost. And on that note, Loki’s anxiety shifts to anger, as it tends to. Why can’t his brother just chill for two seconds and realize that it’s not even a big deal? So what he lied and then...broke into their...apartment..and lied to Thor’s………...boyfriend. Oops.

The school bell rings, and children rush out of every classroom. Right on time, Bruce pulls up, and Loki suddenly forgets the whole thing and jumps right in.

“Hi, Kevin. How was school?” Bruce smiles at the rearview mirror.

“Ugh. Don’t ask me that, it’s weird.” Kevin blushes. “It was good, I guess.”  
Bruce laughs. “Ok, I’ll try not to. What was good about it, though?”

Kevin watches the trees out of the backseat window and smiles. “I’ll tell you if you give me ten dollars.”

“How about I give you the last ice cream sandwich instead?”

“The deal has been made, then. I only hope you honor this pact.” He squints at the back of the driver’s chair.

Bruce turns into the parking lot of their apartment. “We’ll see, we’ll see.” Bruce exits, and at the same time, forgets to lock the car once again. He walks towards the lobby with Kevin coming along close behind. The doorman smiles at both of them as they pass through the door. Kevin takes a lollipop from the bowl at the front counter, which the doorman has only recently placed there, seemingly just for him. And Kevin loves the attention.

“Have any homework?” Bruce says as they go up the stairs, his keys jingle softly as he readies them for the lock on the door. Bruce locks the door now, thanks to The Incident.

“I know a trick when I see one. Let’s honor the deal first.” Kevin skips ahead of Bruce and waits with excitement at the door. 

Bruce laughs and unlocks the door. Kevin is the first one to go through it, rushing to the freezer before Bruce can say anything else on the matter. He sits down at the table and takes no time unwrapping it and putting it in his mouth. Just in case Bruce called off the whole thing. You never know.

“I-”

“Yes, I do have homework, but Sandra is doing it for me because I paid her. It helps that she has a crush on Summer and she doesn’t want that to get out.” Bruce only raises his eyebrows. “And my day was good because….” Kevin speaks with his mouth full but stops chewing for a second to think about his answer. His eyes light up. “Because nothing happened.”

“Is that a good thing?” 

“Yes, very. When something happens, it’s always bad.”

“Kevin, I really don’t think that’s true.” Bruce laughs shortly, with concern.

“Trust me. I know about happenings. They’re not good.” He points his ice cream and Bruce and raises his eyebrows before taking another bite.

Then the room falls to silence while Loki slash Kevin eats his hard-won iced cream. Bruce leans against the wall with crossed arms and stares at the floor, thinking. He scratches his chin. “Thor’s coming home soon, you know. Maybe today.” He looks up at Kevin, who’s made a mess of his face. “Do you want to be here when he comes? I mean, I’m sure he’d love to meet you.”

Kevin wipes his mouth with his jacket sleeve and sighs. “I uh, I don’t know. For once. I don’t know what to do, and I’ve never said that before, but it’s true. I think things are just going to happen, no matter what I do, so...might as well just...I don’t know, have fun while I still...can…” Kevin looks down. “We only have so much time. Bruce. We will require more iced cream.”

Bruce laughs and wipes his face with his hand, and Kevin is offended by this. “Kevin, it’s just my boyfriend, he’s not gonna kill you when he sees you, huh?”

Kevin gives a broken smile. “Yeah, right…”

“Look, when he comes, I’ll go out the door first and tell the whole story, then I’ll let him come in and we’ll watch a movie or something. It’ll be fine.” Bruce moves to the sink and wets a washcloth, which he hands to Kevin and gestures at the chocolate stained on his jacket. And that was that.

Then thirty more minutes pass, thirty minutes in which Loki almost forgets he should be very, very scared. He has fun, Bruce brings out a puzzle and they do it slowly, but it’s always in the back of his mind. Bruce is wholly unaffected, which offends Loki a second time. The thirty minutes pass by very mildly, and they’re almost done with the puzzle before someone jiggles the doorknob a few times.

“Bruce! Tis me!” The voice from behind the door exclaims. “It’s your boyfriend! I’m Thor, it’s me!” 

Bruce looks with a smile to Loki, and Loki casts a nervous smile back, except he can’t hide his pure fear from Bruce. Bruce pats him on the shoulder and whispers a few words of reassurance, which do absolutely nothing. He gets up to open the door, carefully pushing Thor back as he does so. They exchange a few greetings and probably kiss (which Loki quickly erases from his mind’s eye.) And after that, all the words become muffled and distorted as he goes into panic mode. He has one minute or less to get the hell out of Dodge before his brother murders him along with everyone else in this apartment complex with a lightning storm the likes of which this realm has never seen. 

He jumps up and knocks over the puzzle that he and Bruce had worked so hard to finish. But he doesn’t look back, he only looks around wildly before noticing the open window above the kitchen sink. A light breeze ruffles the curtains. Loki jumps up onto the counter and looks down at the ground below. They are on the second-floor, door twelve, and the drop is suddenly not looking very survivable. Maybe if he just landed with-

“Hey, Kevin? We’re coming in now. C’mon, Thor, he’s right inside.” Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, fuck. Loki promptly runs out of time. He turns around just as Thor enters the apartment, and with horror he watches the scene unfold right before him. Within half a second of laying his eyes upon Loki his happy smile turns to a look of anger on a dime. Time seems to slow down as Thor rushes past Bruce, almost shoving him aside as he walks towards his brother.

Okay, now it’s time for plan B: talking his way out of it. As if that would work in any universe. Loki hops off the counter and backs himself into it at the same time. “Look, Thor, I KNOW that-” Thor grabs him by the collar and lifts him two feet off the ground with ease, and that ends plan B.

Bruce exclaims and covers his mouth. “THOR! STOP, TH-”

“Tell me what you are doing here RIGHT NOW or so help me I will call the heavens down upon you.”

Bruce tries again. “Thor, god damn it, stop, that’s Kevin! Jesus fucking Christ are you ins-”

Loki grunts and struggles to get Thor’s hands off his collar, kicking his feet against the counter. “BANNER, BY THE NINE REALMS, JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LET ME HANDLE THIS, ALRIGHT? I KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH MY OWN FUCKING BROTHER WITHOUT YOUR INPU-” Loki’s screeching is cut off by Thor’s hand covering his mouth. 

“What the fu-” Bruce has reached a new level of confusion.

“Bruce, get some rope, right now.” Thor puts Loki in a headlock with his hand still over his mouth, and Loki tries his best to wriggle himself out in vain. His screeching continues, muffled by Thor’s hand, but still just as vile. Bruce does as he’s told immediately, and his face rests with worry as he helps tie Loki’s hands and feet together. At some point along the way, Thor removes his hand, and Loki says nothing, allowing his fate to happen to him. Loki rests with his back leaned against the cabinet, unable to not look extremely pissed at this whole thing, despite it being all his fault. Thor gets a bottle of water from the fridge and sets it just out of reach, and Loki gives his best glare in return.

“I will allow you to have that when you explain yourself truthfully. Be careful, because I will know when you lie, and you also need that water to live, so...” Thor shrugs as he sits down on the floor to be eye-level with his brother and Loki looks away, saying nothing for once in his life.

Bruce sits on the couch in shock, his hand on his forehead in confusion. Thor glances at him with concern before turning back to Loki with a completely neutral expression, which is scarier than any other emotion that could have been displayed. “You upset Bruce, you ruined his day. His week. Was it worth it?” Thor toys with the water bottle and Loki again says nothing. Thor squints. “What did you want out of him? Money?" Loki winces. Well, he can't be blamed for THAT. It was Banner's idea. "Did you want to get to me? Did yo-”

“Nothing, you idiot.” Loki shifts. “I didn’t want anything. And I didn’t get anything either if that was your next question.”

Thor laughs. “Is that really your answer?”

“Yes, it is, and it’s true.” Loki briefly makes eye contact with his brother and looks away again. 

“Brother, you don’t do things for nothing. You’ve never done anything for nothing in your entire life.”

A full minute passes of quiet contemplation for all parties until Loki decides to speak. “I woke up four weeks ago at an abandoned train station in Norway with these clothes on,” He smiles. “And you’ll be honored to know that the first person I thought of….was you. I’m not lying and you know it, so shut up.” Thor continues to play with the water bottle, and Loki, for the third time today and not the last, gets offended by this. “Well, you could say thank you.” Thor does not and Loki rolls his eyes. 

“Typical. Anyways, then I found your address from a creepy man in Stockholm, so I stowed away on the next boat to New York. This is impressive, by the way. I’m good.” Loki once again pauses for approval but gets none. “And then I found your apartment and I was just gonna wait around until, uh…” Loki looks at his brother. “Something happened. And then something did. Bruce walked out and I was like ‘oh, where are you going?’ and Bruce was like ‘oh, I don’t know you’ and then I...well, that was four days ago, and since then, I’ve kinda been, like….ssssssssleeping here?” Thor stops his fidgeting, and his expression seems to soften, if only by the smallest amount. Bruce groans from the couch, and Thor goes to comfort him. Loki tries not to look. Is Bruce….crying? Oh, this isn’t good. Not at all.

“And what if I believe you, that you had no bad intentions?” Thor says from his place next to Bruce on the couch.

Loki scoffs. “It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not, because it’s true. I’m telling the truth for once, can’t you just believe me?”

“If you were telling the truth you’d have told me why you stayed for four days by now. But I haven’t heard that part yet, and I’m waiting. What possible explanation could you have for worming your way into my life for that long could you have? There is a reason for that, and I will know what it is or else.” 

Loki squints at nothing as he thinks about the answer. “You want me to say it, but I’m not going to.”

Thor laughs as he rubs Bruce’s back reassuringly. “You have no choice but to say it, brother, unless you want to be turned into the authorities.”

“You’re just going to do that anyways.”

“How do you know?” Loki has no answer for this one. He sneers at the wall. Bruce seems to have calmed down with Thor beside him, but he still has not mustered the will to speak yet. 

Loki sighs. “You’re the worst, and I hate you, Thor.” Thor laughs. “I was lonely, alright? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“That’s not what I wanted to hear and you know it.” 

Loki sighs even louder and waits about thirty seconds, giving himself time to work through the shame. Still, he speaks quietly and under his breath. “I missed you.”

“What was that? I couldn’t hear you over the sound nothing.”

Loki sneers and speaks slightly louder than before. “I missed you.” He’s still drowned out by the static of the quiet room.

“I can’t hear you.”

“I MISSED YOU, IDIOT!” The change in volume makes Bruce jump a bit. Loki blushes. “And I hate you.”

“Say it again without the last part for me please?” Thor’s voice is smug.

“No!” Loki huffs and Thor stares at him, unbroken, until the pressure forces Loki to say it. “I. Missed. You. Idiot.”

Thor smiles at his brother. “There you go. Hey, Bruce?” The man beside him hums in response. “What do you think we should do with him?”

“What?” Bruce seems shocked that he’s the one who was asked.

“Well, he hurt you the most, you should decide his punishment, right?” Thor pats his back and Bruce sighs. Loki broods in his place near the cabinet.

“Thor, I don’t want to decide anything, I’m sorry. I can’t right now. This is too weird.” Bruce rubs his temples. Thor nods in understanding and turns to Loki.

“I’m going to turn you in, brother. Obviously. But…” Thor pauses for effect. “I’ll try to get you in a better prison than normal. And you are, technically, a child, so there are perks that come with that as well.” Thor smiles. “Maybe I’ll even have them put you in one with some visiting hours. If you’re lucky.” Loki examines his brother closely, and his smile doesn’t waver as he turns to Bruce. “Hey, babe, do you think you could call Stark while I watch this one for a bit?” Bruce takes a while before he nods wordlessly and springs up, grabbing his phone and heading for the other room.

“You know what, Loki?

“What?”

“I missed you too, idiot.” The corner of Loki’s lip twitches as he uses every single muscle in his body to keep from smiling. Except that Thor is well-versed in Loki mannerisms, so he knows what that means. And he smiles back.

Bruce grips the phone in one hand and holds his hair back on his forehead with the other. “Hi, Tony-yeah, yeah….I’m good, I guess, yeah. I mean, there is one thing that I wanted to, uh, talk to you about…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this cost me my sanity

**Author's Note:**

> taika waititi secretly knows that bruce and thor are dating and he reads my fanfictions i know it


End file.
